Alumna Cheryl W. Thompson to receive Washington Association of Black Journalists Legacy Award

Cheryl W. Thompson (BS ’82, LAS; MS ’84, journalism), investigative correspondent and senior editor at NPR, and associate professor at George Washington University, will receive the 2024 Washington Association of Black Journalists Legacy Award.

This award recognizes a current or retired journalist or journalism educator in the Washington, D.C., area who has broken barriers and/or provided distinguished leadership in increasing access and opportunities to people of color in journalism. 

Thompson will be honored at the third annual WABJ Special Honors & Scholarship Gala on Saturday, Dec. 7, at the Blackburn University Center, Howard University. 

“As the first elected Black president of the Investigative Reporters and Editors organization, and as an associate professor of investigative reporting at George Washington University, where she founded and also advises an NABJ student chapter, Cheryl has forged an exemplary pathmaking career rooted in strengthening the next generation qualifying her as a worthy recipient of WABJ’s Legacy Award,” the WABJ Awards Review Committee said. The Investigative Reporters and Editors is a 6,000-member organization dedicated to enhancing the quality of investigative journalism. 

Thompson has worked at Champaign-Urbana’s News-Gazette, Chicago Tribune, The Kansas City Star, Los Angeles Daily News, The Gainesville Sun, and The Washington Post, where she wrote extensively about law enforcement, political corruption and guns, and was a White House correspondent during President Barack Obama’s first term.

She has received numerous awards for her investigative reporting, including an Emmy, three shared Pulitzer Prizes, and five awards from the National Association of Black Journalists, one awarded in 2019 for a Washington Post Sunday Magazine story on the nearly 50-year-old unsolved murders of six little black girls in D.C. 

Thompson is a member of the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. and received the NABJ Educator of the Year Award in 2017. She’s also a founding and current board member of the Center for Collaborative Investigative Journalism, which focuses on cross-border investigations.